MakeMyTrip – VIVEK SHARMA – 2025
Summary
The Climate Corps fellow Vivek Sharma developed an India-specific GHG measurement tool for MakeMyTrip’s travel ecosystem.
Goals
MakeMyTrip (MMT), India’s leading online travel aggregator (OTA), is advancing its sustainability journey by estimating the ecosystem-level climate impact. MMT instituted this study to empower the ecosystem to measure the relevant GHG emissions accurately and plan the respective roadmaps towards achieving sustainable travel. The existing methodologies were based on global averages and hence lacked contextualised methods and factors. To address this, MMT enlisted the Climate Corps fellow Vivek to develop a comprehensive, India-specific GHG emissions measurement tool for the travel industry.
Solutions
Vivek Sharma created a suite of GHG measurement tools tailored for India’s travel sector. For hotels, he analysed material operations and benchmarked existing methodologies like the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) to build a comprehensive tool with regional emission factors. For ground transport, he categorized India’s diverse vehicle fleet and developed India-specific calculators. The per-passenger emission factors were referred from the technical papers of the India GHG Program along with the categories of vehicles like Bus, Metro, Car (800 cc), 2-wheeler, Car (1200 cc). For air travel, Vivek created a new, more relevant and contextualised India-specific emission factor using official flight and passenger data, addressing a major need in existing global models. These components were then integrated into a user-friendly prototype application to support MMT’s partners, clients, and travellers in their decarbonization efforts.
Potential Impact
Vivek’s work equipped the travel industry to comprehensively measure its relevant emissions. The proposed air travel emission factor showed a significant variation from the previously used per-passenger India-specific factor, thus improving accuracy. This, along with tailored tools for hotels and ground transport, provides a direct and tangible way for the industry (individual service suppliers, large OTAs, corporate clients) to measure their carbon footprints using context-specific data. In the long term, this foundational capability for accurate measurement could potentially support clients in their decarbonization journeys, foster a more sustainable travel ecosystem, and position MMT as a leader driving climate action in the Indian travel industry. By empowering travelers and business partners with transparent data, this initiative enables more informed, sustainable choices towards achieving a long-term Net-Zero travel ecosystem.
